In this Pit thread quite a few people mention that their university libraries have rules against looking at porn on library computers.
I’m a grad student at private university on the east coast, prestigious but not an Ivy League school. Recently, the “Suggestions” board in our library had a complaint from a patron about people looking at porn on library computers. The librarian responded that the university’s and the library’s policy of maintaining a free research environment means that there are no prohibitions on what websites people are allowed to look at. The librarian asked (i’m paraphrasing here; i don’t have the exact quote in front of me): “How do you know that the people you saw do not have a legitimate research project that requires them to look at those websites?”
I was wondering whether anyone else’s college or university (or even public) libraries had a similar policy, because in my experience many libraries explicitly discourage or ban looking at website that are “offensive” or that “may cause discomfort to other patrons.” Is there any public/private university issue here? Do public universities have different rules to follow? (that’s why i mentioned before that i’m at a private college) Or is this sort of thing done only on an individual library basis?
Note that i’ve put this in General Questions because, for the moment at least, i’m just interested in finding out how many people’s libraries allow truly unlimited access to the internet. If people want a Great Debate on whether this sort of thing should be allowed, then maybe we can start another thread.
for various policies of the American Library Association.
Academic and public libraries do have slightly different focuses. You should be able to find any institution’s library Internet policy through its website.
Most libraries lean to the more liberal application of use of the Internet. But there are often complaints by the community (difficult) and workplace issues brought up by employees (VERY difficult).
I’m a student at a large public university (and I’m in the library & information science program to boot), and AFAIK, there are no such restrictions on use of the internet on the school’s computers.
That said, there are restrictions on gaming and non-school related activities when others are waiting. What that basically means is that if people are in there looking at porn over holiday breaks when few people are around, nothing will be said to them. If it’s finals week and everyone needs a computer and needed it 10 minutes ago, those who are playing games or looking at porn and the like will be asked to leave the computer.
BobT, I can’t tell you how many times these issues came up in classes this semester - one of my professors works in the reference department and I think he used the “grey hair” idea as well.
I, too, am a librarian and this is an issue I deal with almost daily! Our library policy is posted at every machine and our public computer’s homepages are set to the policy (http://seq.clan.lib.ri.us/wwa/onpolicy.htm just in case you’re interested in seeing it), but it doesn’t make a bit of difference. My objections to porn are not personal. If you want to surf porn on your home computer, go right ahead. But at the public library you are in PUBLIC. What you view on the machine you use is not only viewed by you, but by anyone (of any age) who happens to stroll by. My role as librarian is to protect the rights of the patrons and assist in making sure our library is a non-threatening environment. This means that if you really want to download pics from spankmedaddy.com, you’re gonna have to do it at home because it’s not appropriate for you to do that while sitting next to the teenage girl who’s also using the computer lab.
Please excuse me if I seem overly hepped up about this at the moment, but I just cleaned about 30 sextracker cookies off one public access machine and that tends to get me a little steamed.
Many libraries are now looking into the purchase of bandwidth management devices to regulate what programs we allow to suck off bandwidth on our T1 lines. I had heard that lots of universities are doing this too because they found that even T1 wasn’t fast enough. When they looked at their internet usage through the bandwidth management devises (also called packet shapers), they found that KaZaA was eating up much of it. Once they started restricting the amount of bandwidth that file trading programs could eat, their T1s came back up to speed.
lauramarlane, the university I’m at just set up a bandwith management device, precisely to control the file-sharing/bandwith problem. The connection speed was being compromised for academic users, and this will reduce the bandwith available to file-sharing programs.
It was all over the campus paper for a couple of days, but I didn’t see much protest about it.
Many of the libraries in our network just received funding for these devices and we will be purchasing them pretty soon so I’ll have the first hand experience on how well they work.
I don’t think many people would complain unless they were being completely shut out of a particular function–like we’ll be shutting down the ability to do chat on public machines. Most places just use them to prioritize functions so that the more important day-to-day stuff is at the top of your list for bandwidth usage.
BobT, i actually had a quick look on the ALA website before i posted the thread. The ALA, on its Q&A webpage regarding access to electronic information:
Also, the ALA’s position on internet filters is that they generally fail to serve their purpose (eliminating porn) and simply make finding certain types of information more difficult.
The ALA concedes, however, that it
It does seem to me that the issue of constitutionally protected speech means that public libraries probably need to be more careful than private ones in restricting access to internet information. Is there a lawyer out there who knows whether or not this is the case?
We’re looking at similar devices here as well (I just read the usage report the computer folks sent out and it looks like KaZaA is our main bandwidth eater too).
RE: porn in public. We don’t have an official policy restricting internet use on our public workstations, but unofficially all the staff try to discourage it as much as possible. Everyone has their own tricks to doing this; I personally don’t wander around looking for people to bust but I do keep an eye on folks who are looking at unsavory websites (and they’re soooo easy to spot, believe me). If anyone complains however, I’ll immediately go up to the offender and ask that they take it elsewhere. I personally don’t see why anyone would want to look at porn in a public area but then there’s a lot about humanity I don’t get…
My public library system uses an agreement form that you must sign before you are allowed to use the library’s computers for full Internet access. One of the things you agree to is that you will not display “inappropriate materials, defined as text or graphics which may resonably be construed as obscene.” That way, if we kick someone out for displaying porn on our computers, we are not kicking them out because they exercised free speech, but because they violated the contract they signed not to display offensive material.
Even the supreme court has agreed that what’s considered obscene in one community may be acceptable in another. Therefore, our policy is based (somewhat) upon that. Child pornography is not protected by the first amendment so that’s a definite no no–but not something I’ve encountered with our patrons, thank god! Unfortunately, I’ve had a lot of fine line instances–the creepy older guy who’s downloading and printing out pictures of little girls from online clothing store catalogs. No, he doesn’t have grandkids he’s doing this for and yes, he has a fondness for little children. He’s not accessing any illegal sites, but we know his history and that makes it very uncomfortable for the librarians here at times.
A few years ago I interviewed for a job in one of the nation’s major public library systems. One of the questions they asked me was “A patron is looking at porno on the library’s internet computer. What do you tell them?” I mumbled something incoherent. Turns out it was a trick question. They told me the library’s policy was not to interfere with the patrons’ choice of web sites, porno or no porno.
This was in the news just a few days ago. The filters aren’t perfect but they block more porn and less health sites as I thought they did. I can’t imagine what information is in the 9% of blocked safe sex sites that wasn’t in the first 91%.
I would like to see filters on the computers in public areas with the librarians being able to turn them off if people have need of information that they can’t get to because of the filters. Porn should be actively discouraged in the public areas.
Now, if they wanted to set up a few computers in a dark room in the back for people to use for porn I would be all for that! That might even be fun.
I just can’t support the idea of filters. Some patrons are looking up things that are very sensitive to them. If you make them have to ask the librarian to turn off the filter so they can find whatever it is they’re looking for, just having to do that would prevent some people from seeking the information they need. As long as filters prevent access to health sites, information on homosexuality, or whatever it is the person needs, they just don’t belong in the library.
